Spirituality and Simplifying Life

Some people turn to God in order to simplify their lives. That may happen -- it depends on how complex your life is now and on what God has in store for you. But God often makes your life more complicated. You are called to love God first. But then, loving God, you start to love what God loves. Other people. Nature. Truth. Commitment. Solidarity. And you start to be disturbed by what disturbs God. War. Pollution. Greed. Powerlust. Disrespect for life. Divorce. Racism. And God's love calls you to action. Part of what makes a Christian spirituality 'simple' is that is has a single focus: loving as Jesus Christ loves. All else radiates from there or is to be set aside.

Moods swing, life has rhythms, ups, downs. What at one time seems so totally, deeply true, or is even known to be true, can at other times seem so false and shallow. Disciplines train you to stay on course when the moods swing. If you don't, you drift away. (Indeed, that is what most former believers have done: no momentous rift, just a slow drifting out and fading away, until it doesn't matter anymore to them.)

Christian spirituality helps make life simpler in another way. The chase after a wealthy life style is a rather complicated affair: the standards keep shifting, and the worries are many. That's why Christian contemplatives and mystics speak so often of 'detachment'. By taking our focus off of getting stuff, we have more of ourselves available to focus on learning to love rightly, or taking time to be face-to-face with those in need, or learning Scripture, or learning how to depend on the Spirit. You can't follow Christ and chase wealth; most of the time, the paths go in opposite directions.

.

In a perfect world, our dreams will be fulfilled. There would be no hard work or planning ahead, because everything you want would be given to you. In the real world, where we all live, rewards must be earned. The problem most people have is in the day-to-day details of accomplishment. Accomplishment takes a lot of time, sacrifice and effort, and that’s the real rub for a lot of people. But, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”